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Tech firms call for US to stay in climate-focused Paris Agreement

The Paris Agreement is the 2016 deal on measures to tackle the climate emergency signed by 195 nations and states. However, US president Donald Trump has made it clear that he intends to withdraw from the agreement, and the earliest date at which he could do that would be November 2020. Now a group of American companies, coordinated by national union federation AFL-CIO, are calling for Trump to rethink his plans.

Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai are among the company bosses signing an open letter, although Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos are (for now) conspicuous by their absence. “There has been progress, but not enough. This moment calls for greater, more accelerated action than we’ve seen. It calls for the strong policy framework the Paris Agreement provides, one that allows the US the freedom to choose our own path to emissions reductions,” explains the letter. “The promise of the Paris Agreement is one of a just and prosperous world. We urge the United States to join us in staying in.” Whether the president will heed their wishes is, as is the case with so many policy questions in the US under this particular leader, anyone’s guess.